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Bleak Abyss Retirement Home

The fate of grandma, her ungrateful children never visiting, the patronizing staff treating her like a five-year old

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When the elderly can't take care of themselves, often the most practical solution is a nursing home or assisted living facility. The kids and relatives, if any, have their own lives and can't devote themselves to full time care. Staying in home with a private nursing staff is out of reach for all but the wealthiest. A dedicated facility catering to the needs of the elderly is the pragmatic solution.

But that doesn't make it easy.

When it's time to "put mom in a home," expect a great deal of angst over the decision, quite possibly dividing siblings over the appropriate course of action. Moving to a new place inevitably means abandoning a house filled with personal affects and memories that are irreplaceable. After arrival, it gets worse: the promised once a week visits from the kids become more like once a month, or once a year. The staff is at best patronizingly helpful, perhaps talking like kindergarten teachers to the residents, paying heed to the elder's physical needs but not to any need for dignity. At worst, they could be neglectful or abusive. Expect the food to be bland and possibly pureed.

The home could be run-down and dingy, but even if it isn't, it will often be clinical, antiseptic, and dehumanizing. Attempts at warmth with arts-and-crafts project on the walls will be about as effective as motivational posters at a corporate office.

On the other hand, if the kids have some unresolved issues with their parents, then they might see putting them in sub-par nursing homes and never coming back as kicking the father-of-a-bitch.

Examples

Anime and Manga

Japan, Inc.. had a chapter in which the main characters visit a nursing home (one of them has an elderly parent who may need such a facility and the others use this as an excuse to investigate a possible investment.) The place is decent enough, but very depressing, and the characters decide to recommend investing in ways for senior citizens to continue living with family.

In The Real Macaw, this is played with: the plot revolves around preventing the main character's grandfather from getting put in a retirement home, but it's because of the grandfather's enormous debt. They had to sell his house to pay it off.

In Up, no examples are shown, but the idea is there. The elderly in the Pixar ShortGeorge and AJ are so repulsed by the idea of entering a retirement home that they happily follow Carl's example and uproot their houses for destinations unknown. Eventually the denizens of Shady Oaks itself follow suit.

In Win Win, much of the plot revolves around a well-off elderly man unwillingly consigned to an assisted living facility, and who bears responsibility for this. The facility is apparently decent, but the man is still unhappy about leaving his home.

Happy Gilmore: the cheerful orderly who runs the place is running an horrific sweat shop.

In Carl Reiner's dark farce Where's Papa, the lead character tours a Dickensian nursing home he's considering putting his senile mother in.

In She-Devil, Ruth accepts a job in an expensive but dehumanizing retirement home, where she quickly proceeds to bring some color into the lives of both staff and retirees, such as a soccer match that proves to be a hit with the old ladies.

Gran Torino: One of Walt's sons tries to convince him to move into a retirement home but not at all out of genuine concern for his bitter, elderly, and recently-widowed father, oh no. He just wanted the house, some of the stuff and hoped he'd get the titular Cool Car out of the deal too. One can only presume that this trope would have followed. Walt tells him to go to Hell.

Literature

In Lois Lowry's Anastasia Krupnik, the heroine's grandmother lives and dies at such a facility.

In Barbara Brooks Wallace's Peppermints in the Parlor, Sugar Hill Hall as seen through the eyes of the orphan girl working there.

In Red Dragon, the villain grew up in his grandmother's house modified into a retirement home.

Tricky Business has a downplayed version: while the staff isn't too rude or insulting (except for one guy who threatens to put Phil and Arnold in the Assisted Living wing, aka the loony bin), they're not used to having their patients being very active (in fact, large quantities of drugs are distributed to keep them quiet). Phil and Arnold bribe an orderly by giving him their allotted drugs, which he then sells at parties.

In The Twelve Chairs, Ostap Bender visits a retirement home of this kind in search of the MacGuffin. Bleak, antiseptic and run by a very stingy and embezzling administrator (and a bunch of the administrator's relatives chowing on old ladies' rations).

Has a Running Gag that Dorothy had put Sophia in Shady Pines, a retirement home so bleak that simply mentioning sending her back would humble her. She was there for five years before the place burned down.

In a later episode, Sophia's friend Lillian was in a retirement home that Sophia makes clear is the only home worse than Shady Pines. She then concocts a plan to break her friend out.

Inverted in The Sopranos. Tony's mother Livia constantly refers to her retirement home as if its a hell-hole, but on the whole it's shown to be a relatively pleasant place to live

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit featured an extreme version of this trope in an episode that dealt with elder abuse. The detectives initially suspected one of its orderlies of abusing an old woman who'd broken out, but later discovered that the manager herself was also abusing her charges, deliberately giving them drugs to induce heart attacks so that she could "rescue" them and thus look like a hero (and presumably pump their grateful relatives for more money.)

A Running Gag in The Golden Girls is that Dorothy had put Sophia in Shady Pines, a retirement home so bleak that simply mentioning sending her back would humble her. She was there for five years before the place burned down.

In a later episode, Sophia's friend Lillian was in a retirement home that Sophia makes clear is the only home worse than Shady Pines. She then concocts a plan to break her friend out.

The old manga Japan, Inc. had a chapter in which the main characters visit a nursing home (one of them has an elderly parent who may need such a facility and the others use this as an excuse to investigate a possible investment.) The place is decent enough, but very depressing, and the characters decide to recommend investing in ways for senior citizens to continue living with family.

No example of this is shown in Up, but the idea is there. The elderly in the Pixar ShortGeorge and AJ are so repulsed by the idea of entering a retirement home that they happily follow Carl's example and uproot their houses for destinations unknown. Eventually the denizens of Shady Oaks itself follow suit.

Inverted in [[tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/The Sopranos The Sopranos]], Tony's mother Livia constantly refers to her retirement home as if its a hell-hole, but on the whole it's shown to be a relatively pleasant place to live

How do you set up a Troper Tales section to something that's still a YKTTW? Or as the original poster, do I just edit-in "No Real Life examples, please. Troper Tales will be added if and when this is launched," or something to that effect?

On Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends, Madame Foster believes retirement homes are a sort of prison where the elderly are brainwashed into compliance with tapioca pudding. When some of the friends end up trapped in one, she leads a daring breakout.

I decided to get rid of the first paragraph on location-focus vs. resident focus (the idea of a trope for the Abandoned Elder). Abandoned Elder might be a good YKTTW, but I think I'll leave it to someone else.

From Hetty Wainthrop Investigates (a show about an older detective who uses her age for Obfuscating Stupidity), the episode "Helping Hansi." It takes place in a retirement home where one of the managers is constantly scheming to have people kicked out or declared mentally incompetent, so she can seize everything they own.

a Real Life aversion: Some of Japan's oldest living citizens are dying in their homes, not to be found for several days, if not longer. A peculiar phenomenon that suggests that the fate of the elderly is abandonment wheresoever they spend their autumn years.

Played with in the movie The Real Macaw; the plot revolves around preventing the main character's grandfather from getting put in a retirement home, but it's because of the grandfather's enormous debt. They had to sell his house to pay it off.

Tricky Business has a downplayed version: while the staff isn't too rude or insulting (except for one guy who threatens to put Phil and Arnold in the Assisted Living wing, aka the loony bin), they're not used to having their patients being very active (in fact, large quantities of drugs are distributed to keep them quiet). Phil and Arnold bribe an orderly by giving him their alotted drugs, which he then sells at parties.

In She Devil, Ruth accepts a job in an expensive but dehumanizing retirement home, where she quickly proceeds to bring some color into the lives of both staff and retirees, such as a soccer match that proves to be a hit with the old ladies.

In The Twelve Chairs, Ostap Bender visits a retirement home of this kind in search of the Mac Guffin. Bleak, antiseptic and run by a very stingy and embezzling administrator (and a bunch of the administrator's relatives chowing on old ladies' rations).

Gran Torino: One of Walt's sons tries to convince him to move into a retirement home but not at all out of genuine concern for his bitter, elderly, and recently-widowed father, oh no. He just wanted the house, some of the stuff and hoped he'd get the titular Cool Car out of the deal too. One can only presume that this trope would have followed. Walt tells him to go to Hell.

Tricky Business has one that, while not entirely miserable (the two old guys are more active than most of the patients, which causes friction with them and the staff), does give out massive amounts of medication seemingly at random to keep their patients easy to handle. Two of the protagonists bribe an orderly by giving him their allotted drugs, which he then sells at parties.

Law And Order Special Victims Unit featured an extreme version of this trope in an episode that dealt with elder abuse. The detectives initially suspected one of its orderlies of abusing an old woman who'd broken out, but later discovered that the manager herself was also abusing her charges, deliberately giving them drugs to induce heart attacks so that she could "rescue" them and thus look like a hero (and presumably pump their grateful relatives for more money.)

The titular place in The X Files episode "Excelsius Dei" is sort of like this, but I can't remember anything specific, other than the name is misspelled and once it is discovered that the residents are being revitalized by special mushrooms the people in charge have it stopped.

@Tony G: check out the lyrics. The filmMrs Robinson is largely about a young man's relationship with an older married woman. The songMrs Robinson is about a family consigning their slightly confused mother/grandmother to a care home but feeling guilty about it and wanting to hide it from the kids - so it would fit this YKTTW pretty much completely.

It's got the slightly patronising attitude:

We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files (institutional bureaucracy)

We'd like to help you learn to help yourself.

Look around you all you see are sympathetic eyes,

It's got guilty adult children who make the decision to dump her there:

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